“Don’t flatten anyone with yours,” Dad fires back, handing me my bag. “Love you, Emms.”

“Back at you.” Dad drives off, and I join the sea of backpacks and backsides flowing into E. L. Pinckney Junior High. I scan the crowd for my friends. Ale and me share a ride a few days a week, but today she and her mom met one of her aunties for early-early breakfast before school.

Just like back at the elementary building, there’s no automatic door, but I’m pretty good at popping a door open fast enough to get my front wheels through and wriggle my way inside. As I grab the door handle, a big hand darts out and snatches it.

“Allow me, my dear.” The hand whips the door open so fast it almost whacks a guy in a camo T-shirt in the nose.

It’s our principal, Dr. Grayling—who I sometimes think of as Fish, because talking to him can be like trying to get a fish off the line—you never quite know which way things will flip, and it all feels a little slippery. Before I can stop him, he grabs my chair and rolls me through.

Fish and me are still sizing each other up. He started at ELP last spring, and I doubt he’s had a student who used wheels before—at least not one who doesn’t usually need extra help. I’m fine asking for help when I need it, but he never really asks first.

Ale and Tina shove their way through the crowd then, and Dr. Grayling goes back to fussing at everyone to stop shuffling and get to your classes, already.

“I see Fish still thinks you can’t start the day without him,” Ale says when we’re halfway down the hall.

Tina rolls her eyes. “My mom said he was the same way when she worked with him. Obsessed with rules and into everybody’s business.” Tina’s mom works over in Harper County, where Fish was principal up until last year. They can have him back, if you ask me.

The bell rings then, and we hustle to our homerooms. This school’s a lot more spread out than K–6 was, which is fine by me. There are a lot more kids here, too, since three elementary schools combine once we get to junior high. We’re only a couple weeks into the school year, but so far seventh grade is everything I hoped for. Changing classes, more freedom—it all feels just a little bigger and more exciting. I think it’s only going to get better, even though I’ve always been more into speed than studying.

The three of us meet back up at lunch and take our food to the outdoor courtyard where we can each report how things are going.

“Same old, same old,” Ale declares, digging into her leftover pupusas. “Seventh grade has turned out to be as simple as sixth. Except my science teacher had robotics club sign-ups, which sounds slightly cool.”

Tina and I pretend to die of boredom, but we’re proud of how smart she is. If we lived someplace else, Ale would totally be in some fancy smart-kid school, and I’d probably be on some hotshot wheelchair-sports team by now.